Safety/insecurity in a transformation process

The subject of public safety/insecurity is complex, controversial, poorly understood, its resolution demands intervening in multiple, diverse areas and dimensions. Its magnitude and severity is a target of constant manipulation; it is difficult to rise above the interests in conflict to make safety a State policy. In fact, safety policies are part of a certain socioeconomic trajectory and, as such, they are faced from the prevailing political perspective. There are many and diverse interests coexisting around the issue of safety: from those profiting from insecurity to those suffering from it, and in between, its manipulation for political or media purposes. Those undercurrent interests seek to influence safety policies so as to channel water to their own mill. Therefore, this area of problems, same as others, cannot be reduced to a merely technical-professional effort in order to face crimes but instead it demands that an entire network of economic, political and media interests to be identified and understood.

Every approach on safety characterizes ‘in its own way’ the causes, dynamic, amount and effects of insecurity and, consequently, offers very different measures in order to face insecurity and strengthen safety. Therefore, the first thing to elucidate should be what kind of safety is in mind as the referential utopia. Meaning, defining as best as possible what is the security state or situation we aspire. Most likely quite different referential utopias will emerge depending on the interests and needs different social sectors have. So here is a first level of discussion and, at the same time, of searching for eventual common grounds between different perspectives on the future. In principle, it may be slightly more likely to find convergences among actors regarding a desired distant future, than about the present scenario of diverging interests.

Anyhow it will be necessary to tackle the diagnosis of the present situation and here the different ideological and political conceptions, as well as the interests each sector seeks to protect, will carry significant weight. This complicates the attempt to enrich our own diagnosis with contributions from other perspectives but it is essential not to isolate in one’s own vision. As far as several or some of these different perspectives can be articulated, the base of support for action plans emerging from the diagnosis will be stronger and, consequently, those proposals will count on greater and better political and social support.

Depending on how insecurity is defined, a decisive point will be determining whether there is more insecurity today than there was in the past (and if so, how much more), or if it is about a feeling of insecurity fed by a combination of interests and a communicational development that prioritizes reporting certain crimes resorting to morbid, immediate information.

When devising concrete action plans, they are structured in medium and long term horizons and, of course, in a critical short term which is the first construction phase of a course towards the referential utopia. This short term should be understood as the beginning of a transition towards improving the current situation; some name these initial set of measures as ‘the meanwhile’.

Just as while defining the referential utopia and specifying the strategy to head towards it we need to recognize the universe of population attended with the safety policies, it will also be crucial to ask: the meanwhile for whom? Meaning, to whom do we dedicate the short term urgency and priority.

It may be the case of middle-class sectors that are very sensitive regarding the issue of insecurity, but also of impoverished or neglected sectors punished by the mere ‘appearance’ of some of its members (placed under suspicion due to how they look and the existence of widely spread prejudices). Generally, what usually happens is that neither urgency nor priority is given to these lower or middle-lower income sectors, leaving for another moment solving their situation (if it is ever solved). Thus stated, the issue resembles a mined field because any movement towards one way or the other could generate an unexpected blast.

A way of exiting this quagmire is putting that ‘meanwhile’ into context. It is one thing that the ‘meanwhile’ may take part in a process of economic and social transformation and, another quite different one, that it may be merely another moment of a process that reproduces the status quo, as it would be the case of reinforcing the concentration prone growth that prevails almost worldwide.

If a process of transformation of the status quo were in course, then the ‘meanwhile’ of security policies should become part of the transformational effort. Thus, for example, if middle sectors were mobilized because of the issue of insecurity (not the one regarding sectors detained for their appearance), then before determining what to do with insecurity in the ‘meantime’ we would have to assess what role do those middle sectors play in the transformation.

If their role was not important, if their opinions and sensations did not act as sounding boards for efforts seeking to destitute authority, if their electoral weight was negligible, if their feeling of insecurity had no influence on their economic expectations (and therefore on their consumption, saving, investment), in that case the short term strategy regarding safety would include them as a constitutive part of the human rights all citizens possess.

But if, conversely, those middle income sectors were capable to reinforce attempts to destitute authority, if they carried electoral weight, if because of fear they were to cut back on their consumption and investment, then they should be given greater priority in the short term since in addition to the right to safety all citizens have, there would be the need to preserve the transformational process. But firstly, it would be necessary to discern whether their fear of insecurity is objective or induced in order to, depending on which one it is, choose the most appropriate measures. If insecurity were induced by political and media campaigns that profit from generating fear, the answers would have to consider counter-campaigns resorting to clarification, information and education. If, on the contrary, fear were well-founded, more specific and effective safety measures would have to be adopted.

Obviously short term measures could not only refer to middle income sectors, which would be inadmissible. Even if they did not carry the same political or economic weight, it is of the utmost importance to solve with vigor and equal urgency the ‘meanwhile’ of the vast neglected majorities, including especially those people detained because of their appearance. The matter is that in these cases it is not about a ‘feeling’ of insecurity but clearly of insecurity without euphemisms that, therefore, demands fast and decisive solutions.

Insecurity associated to criminality is not resolved, and often cannot even be contained, with the mere penal action (police repression, judicial punishment and jail); prevention and re-socialization measures for those who have committed crimes are required. Penitentiary systems with their lack of control and overcrowding usually aggravate the dangerous personality of those confined instead of helping them regain their condition of human beings capable of contributing to social construction. Profound solutions are more in line with preventing criminal focuses from emerging and, if they are already there, dismantling what sustains and reproduces them.

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